Terry has designed broadcast stations, recording studios, broadcast equipment, intelligent machines and special computer languages for IBM, and has worked as a broadcast journalist covering elections, fires, riots and Woodstock.
He has taught electronics

OK, I'm OnTheAir (As the light-up signs used to say)... I'm running gerg's latest library and after realizing he's running serial@9600, I have data going both ways with PingPair. Yahoo! Running one UNO and one Seeeduino and plain nRF24L01 boards with built-in PCB antenna...

I get about one timeout in 10 transmissions... No difference between distances of 2cm and 3M . These are the smallest radios I've ever used.. In contrast I just unpacked a 204A from my Dad, which is an 18" high vacuum tube that was a display antique when I first saw it in 1950. Sorry, but I love these contrasts ( for old-guy stories)..

I'll do more tomorrow and fire up the boards with power amp and LNA and antennas that LOOK like antennas.

I get about one timeout in 10 transmissions... No difference between distances of 2cm and 3M . These are the smallest radios I've ever used..

You're not alone in your awe. Its pretty awesome what they fit in that tiny little IC.

I'm assuming the error rate is actually a false positive. There have been a number of driver issues along these lines. I think Maniacbug even mentioned he recently fixed one. I'd have to look to see if that fix is part of the branch you're using.

I hope to play some more this week and see if I can nail down some of the potential issues I've identified.

Terry has designed broadcast stations, recording studios, broadcast equipment, intelligent machines and special computer languages for IBM, and has worked as a broadcast journalist covering elections, fires, riots and Woodstock.
He has taught electronics

I'm assuming the error rate is actually a false positive. There have been a number of driver issues along these lines. I think Maniacbug even mentioned he recently fixed one. I'd have to look to see if that fix is part of the branch you're using.

Looking at the two Serial outputs, a missed transmission seems to always have the PONG not sending a response (Maybe not getting a message).. Seems like any time PONG sends a response, PING gets it..

BTW it's SO nice to be able to run multiple copies of the IDE and Serial Monitor in the same desktop. Some other older IDE's could not do that and drove me crazy testing communications...

maniacbug

I'm assuming the error rate is actually a false positive. There have been a number of driver issues along these lines. I think Maniacbug even mentioned he recently fixed one. I'd have to look to see if that fix is part of the branch you're using.

Right. You said you're running gerg's branch, which does not yet have the major fix that produced plenty false failures.

That said, failures are a fact of life. This is documented by Nordic. It's particularly acute at 8-bit CRC. At 16-bit CRC, 1MBps data rate, channel 100, units 12 inches apart, I almost never get any failures.

Terry has designed broadcast stations, recording studios, broadcast equipment, intelligent machines and special computer languages for IBM, and has worked as a broadcast journalist covering elections, fires, riots and Woodstock.
He has taught electronics

... You said you're running gerg's branch, which does not yet have the major fix that produced plenty false failures.

That said, failures are a fact of life. This is documented by Nordic. It's particularly acute at 8-bit CRC. At 16-bit CRC, 1MBps data rate, channel 100, units 12 inches apart, I almost never get any failures.

Hey Maniac.. do you have a major 'Fix' that " produced plenty false failures."? Sorry, a bit confused... Does your current release have the fix?

Yes, I understand there will be fails and hope that the automatic retries can be worked out.

maniacbug

Ok, I could have worded that better. I mean it doesn't have the FIX to a BUG which caused false failures. Pull the latest from git@github.com:maniacbug/RF24.git (preferred) or download the latest from https://github.com/maniacbug/RF24/archives/master . This branch has now 2 fixes to 2 bad bugs.

maniacbug

Did some controlled range tests tonight. Will post the detailed results this weekend. Here's the highlights:

* Non-plus unit, 2MBps (worst case), 41+ ft line of sight indoors, immediate dropoff with any deviation from LOS. (41 ft is as far as I can go in my house without turning a corner)* Plus unit, 250kbps (best case), 46 ft around two corners indoors, 49 ft around one corner. More importantly, at 250k, packet loss is almost negligible through almost all of that range.* Both units at 1MBps, plus unit gets about 10% range improvement over non-plus in almost all situations.

Hi All,I am noob on this programming, I wanna test my nRF24L01+ that I bought from sparkfun : here.I use this tutorial : here, to connect the radio and arduino.I use RF24's sketch example : pingpair_test.pde

Problem :the sender unit output is "+OK FAIL" when I send "K" from serial monitor..what this is mean?does the receiver unit is not working?or something I missed

Did some controlled range tests tonight. Will post the detailed results this weekend. Here's the highlights:

* Non-plus unit, 2MBps (worst case), 41+ ft line of sight indoors, immediate dropoff with any deviation from LOS. (41 ft is as far as I can go in my house without turning a corner)* Plus unit, 250kbps (best case), 46 ft around two corners indoors, 49 ft around one corner. More importantly, at 250k, packet loss is almost negligible through almost all of that range.* Both units at 1MBps, plus unit gets about 10% range improvement over non-plus in almost all situations.

Excellent. Thanks so much for sharing those results! I guess its safe to say 250Kbps data rate provides considerably improved range.

maniacbug

As some are creating networks in their yard or outdoors, do you have any plans to test longer LOS ranges; such as outside?

Wasn't planning to. Range testing is very situation-dependant, so therefore best done by people who have actual scenarios they can test against. That is, all my indoor tests were in situations where I'd really use it. As I have no use for outside RF, I'd be the wrong person for that. Anyone can do a range test, no special equipment is required. I'll also include the sketch and methods used when I publish the details for the above tests.

All other things being equal doubling the data rate should drop the range to 70% since the receiver sees twice the noise power... So 250k ought to give about 3 times the range of 2M (I think...)

I've used these NRF modules with a different microcontroller (Propeller) and they are pretty well-behaved - I've tried the one's with 20dBm PA on as well. I can get 24bit mono audio at 48000 kSPS through them in 2M mode if packet ACKs are turned off BTW(!)

There are somewhat cheaper Chinese clones of the modules available on eBay - look for the Chinese markings near the PCB aerial. Since they use the same actual chip and crystal and circuit they basically perform the same AFAICT.

There are also modules called RFM70 available (Hope RF I think), which are different silicon but the same interface. However they are not exactly the same (no 250kHz mode, +5dBm output, couple of bugs), BUT most notably they have a second register bank that needs setting up in a particular way to get it to work at all (a configuration ROM implemented as RAM) - only needs setting at init time.

RFM70 is even cheaper (£2.95 from Farnell here in UK, as opposed to about £6 for the NRF24L01+ or £4 for the NRF clones.)

RFM70 have very poor RF performance (the receive side is basically pants). Very susceptible to overload and interference compared to NRF. They do have a switchable LNA however. For low-bandwidth use this may not matter too much since the retransmission protocol can mask a multitude of ills - if you wanted to scatter loads of low-bandwidth cheap wireless nodes about the house, the cheapness would be an important factor.

RFM70 is only available with a 0.05 inch pin spacing note.

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